Tag Archives: christmas food

Star Biscuits

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A starry biscuit.

A starry biscuit.

I recently bought a set of star cookie cutters, containing stars in five different sizes. I was very eager to try them out.

 

 

 

Cutting the cookie dough.

Cutting the cookie dough.

I used a basic cookie recipe from The Organised Housewife, it is the best cookie recipe ever! I rolled it out and then used one of the larger star cookie cutters to cut out the biscuits. I found it a little difficult to move the cookie dough in its star shape onto the baking tray without damaging it. To solve this, I carefully used an egg flip to lift each shape and slide it onto the baking tray. I cooked them until the were golden.

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Coles ready-to-roll icing.

Making the biscuits plain allowed me to decorate the top of them without going overboard with the flavours. From Coles I had purchased some pre-coloured ready-to-roll icing (fondant), which I used to make smaller stars to decorate the top of the biscuits. I used green, yellow and red, and made stars in three sizes using the smallest of the cookie cutters. To attach the fondant stars, I used a basic white icing mix (made with icing sugar mixture and milk). I iced each biscuit, and then carefully added some of the fondant stars to each one before the white icing could set.

It was a little fiddly working with the icing shapes as I hadn’t done much like that before, but I really liked the finished biscuits. They looked just how I had envisioned them.

Some of the finished biscuits.

Some of the finished biscuits.

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Christmas Cookies

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We had a Christmas baking session over the weekend, and the kids helped me make some Christmas cookies.

We used a tried and tested cookie recipe I found on The Organised Housewife ages ago. It is the best cookie recipe we have ever tried, and it makes lots of cookies in each batch. We have added many different things to this simple recipe, but my favourite addition is caramel choc chips!

Shaping cookies.

Shaping cookies.

Adding m&ms.

Adding m&ms.

I let the kids shape the cookies, and then add red and green m&ms to the top of each cookie. The kids hid m&ms inside some of the cookies too. The cookies ended up being all different sizes, but mostly round. I had to keep an eye on them in the oven so that the littler ones didn’t burn.

 

Ready to mix the sprinkles into the dough.

Ready to mix the sprinkles into the dough.

We also added red and green sprinkles to some of the cookie dough to make other cookies. We got the sprinkles from Woolworths in a handy Christmas pack that included the sprinkles, silver cachous and little sugar candy cane sprinkles. Once I had mixed the sprinkles into the dough, the green sprinkles pretty much disappeared, but the red sprinkles were still visible. The kids shaped the cookies, and made some of them very large!

The first batch ready for the oven.

The first batch ready for the oven.

After the cookies had cooled, the kids picked out the ones that they wanted to give to their teachers, and we wrapped them up in pink cellophane. We finished each bundle off with curly coloured ribbons, and gave them to their teachers for Christmas presents.

Teacher presents.

Teacher presents.

Strawberry Santas

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I’ve been seeing photos of these little strawberry Santas popping up on my Facebook feed over the last couple of weeks, and I wanted to try it out.

I bought the largest strawberries that I could find because I thought it would be easier to use for this task. For the filling, I made basic white buttercream, but it would have worked well with fresh cream too, or maybe even creme fraiche or cream cheese.

The cut strawberry.

The cut strawberry.

The kids had a couple of strawberries each. L cut her own strawberries up, but I helped A with hers. We cut off the top to give it a flat base when we turned the strawberry upside down for the body. We cut off the point of the strawberry to make the Santa hat. The kids had a good time spooning buttercream onto the cut top of the strawberry to make the head. I think they ate quite a lot of the buttercream along the way too!

Adding buttercream.

Adding buttercream.

Both of the kids had trouble dabbing a small bit of buttercream onto the top of the Santa hat for the pom pom. The first couple had very large pom poms! They wiped the buttercream off these ones and ate it, before trying again.

Each strawberry Santa got two little sugar cachous as eyes and they were done. These were easy to make and didn’t take too long. The hardest part for the kids was waiting until after dinner to eat them!

Strawberry Santa

Strawberry Santa

Ice-cream Cone Christmas Trees

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Waffle cones pre-cutting.

Waffle cones pre-cutting.

I saw this recipe on The Organised Housewife last week, and thought it looked like a quick and easy Christmas food idea. I went to gather our ingredients, but our local grocery store didn’t have any normal pointy ice-cream cones! They had plenty of flat bottomed cones, and waffle cones. I’d already told the kids I had a Christmas activity in mind for after dinner, and I didn’t have time (or the desire) to drive elsewhere to find the cones, so we went with waffle cones.

After cutting.

After cutting.

These could have made some very wonky Christmas trees, so I carefully cut off excess cone using a knife, so that when the cones were turned upside down they sat on a plate without falling over. The bits of cone that I cut off, Big L ate with ice-cream, buttercream, Nutella and sprinkles later.

Icing the cone.

Icing the cone.

Adding sprinkles.

Adding sprinkles.

L helped me to make up a portion of light green buttercream, which we used to cover the cones with. Then we added red and green m&ms, pastel coloured sprinkles and mini m&ms. The kids added jelly babies to the top point of their trees at the star/angel.

Carefully placing m&ms.

Carefully placing m&ms.

This was fun, messy and very sweet, but a great activity around Christmas time.

 

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